Legal reform has significant dangers: changing only the window-dressing of harmful systems but leaving the violence of the systems in tact, failing… — Dean Spade Copy Share Image
We should interact with legal reform tactically, knowing that it will not meet our ultimate goals but asking whether there are ways… — Dean Spade Copy Share Image
When we approach legal reform work, we can ask questions like: Will this provide actual relief to people facing violence or harm… — Dean Spade Copy Share Image
We should understand that in the context of the US, where our legal system is based in settler colonialism, capitalism and white… — Dean Spade Copy Share Image
When social movements engage in legal reform, they often mobilize images of people from their constituent population who most match national norms… — Dean Spade Copy Share Image
Because my graduate academic training at law school was not one that included most of the intellectual traditions I find useful for understanding the… — Dean Spade Copy Share Image
One of the concepts I was having trouble illustrating was the concept that administrative systems create narrow categories of gender and force people into… — Dean Spade Copy Share Image
Let’s be gentle with ourselves and each other and fierce as we fight oppression. — Dean Spade Copy Share Image
More conservative advocacy work often encourages portrayals of trans people as people who deserve rights. Deservingness, of course, corresponds to national racial, gender and… — Dean Spade Copy Share Image
Instead of focusing on what the law says about trans people, which is really what the law is saying about itself as a protector… — Dean Spade Copy Share Image
In addition to encouraging us to participate in narratives of "deservingness" that cast large parts of our constituencies as "undeserving," legal reform strategies encourage… — Dean Spade Copy Share Image
"Oppression" or "systems of oppression" operate as a shorthand terms in much writing and speaking so that we do not have to list all… — Dean Spade Copy Share Image
I am interested in recent scholarly work examining the emergence of women's studies and ethnic studies departments and the development of the neoliberal university. — Dean Spade Copy Share Image
Choosing an agenda that supports the apparatuses of racial violence always pays better. — Dean Spade Copy Share Image
My work is heavily influenced by critiques that many critical intellectual traditions, especially Critical Race Theory, have made of reform projects focused on legal… — Dean Spade Copy Share Image
Legal reform organizations are usually trying to portray their constituents as "hard workers," as "not criminals," as citizens, as part of normative family arrangements,… — Dean Spade Copy Share Image
One particular debate that I have seen play out again and again is whether trans people who have more traditional gender expressions or who… — Dean Spade Copy Share Image
